South Korean media say Samsung's advanced packaging technology lags behind TSMC, making it difficult to obtain orders for AI chips

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizens Wu Yanzu in South China for the delivery of clues! CTOnews.com, July 3, according to BusinessKorea, Nvidia accounts for more than 90% of the global AI GPU market, which makes the contract manufacturing rights of its chips the focus of competition.

▲ Image Source Pexels currently, Nvidia's flagship chips A100 and H100 GPU, which are famous for use in ChatGPT, are being supplied exclusively by TSMC. CTOnews.com previously reported that TSMC decided to expand packaging capacity at the request of Nvidia in early June because the supply of these two chips fell short of demand.

The reason why TSMC can exclusively manufacture Nvidia chips is mainly due to the advanced packaging technology of CoWoS. As the ultra-micro manufacturing process has recently reached the level of 20% human hair thickness, packaging technology, as a way to improve the performance of semiconductors, is becoming more and more important.

In the process of packaging, the chips are stacked in 3D, which can shorten the distance between them, thus making the connection between the chips faster. This encapsulation can lead to significant performance improvements of up to 50% or more.

TSMC first introduced CoWoS technology in 2012 and has been upgrading its packaging capabilities ever since. Today, the flagship products of Nvidia, Apple and AMD are all supported by TSMC and its advanced packaging technology. This also explains why Samsung Electronics finished mass production of the 3nm one step ahead of TSMC in 2022, but giants such as Nvidia and Apple still want to use TSMC's production lines.

In order to surpass TSMC's CoWoS, Samsung is developing more advanced I-cube and X-cube packaging technologies. In addition, it is reported that Samsung has focused its research on 3D packaging, stacking multiple chips vertically to improve performance. A semiconductor industry insider said: "soon there will be head-on clashes between Samsung and TSMC over packaging."